CGO requests “Clarification” of CRTC Request

Yesterday the Canadian Gamers Organization received an odd e-mail from the CRTC.  I’m not prepared to accept the response we got today from the CRTC.  There’s no logic or justification for the current response.  We need to see the logic behind this before we comply.

Basically at this point the  CRTC is expecting CGO to provide more evidence to the commission on game throttling.  While the CGO holds evidence of such throttling, we believe that the CRTC currently has enough evidence right now due to what has already been submitted to pursue action on this file.  We have requested further “clarification” on this request and also clarification as to why the CRTC is not acting within its own policies with the current evidence provided by CGO and by Rogers own admission. The CRTC also put forth an unreasonable deadline to have this information in.  They wanted our testing results in by October 10th, 2011 which is Thanksgiving Monday.  Also under CRTC’s updated policy it's the ISP’s that are required to respond in 10 days, not consumers.  We are not running from the CRTC here, just requesting further clarification of policy due to the legal responsibly of Rogers and Cisco to provide to commission with further testing at this time.  We don’t see the relevance of the quoted new CRTC ITMP guidelines on our current complaint. There will be consequences for the CRTC due to continued inaction to push forward with it's own policies :

We wish to append the following information to the request for an extension on our reply we have submitted already on September 30th, 2011. 

We submitted a request to append your reference #522253 and #517209 with testing relating to Call of Duty Black Ops in which spoke with commission staff directly on, and that information was successfully appended to those files.  At this point in time in the CRTC’s investigation we strongly believe it is not up to the members of the Canadian Gamers Organization to provide the commission with further testing that needs to be done on Cisco, and Rogers side to satisfy the commissions policy on ITMP due to a known and proven error in misclassification of online gaming, and other applications.  This has been admitted to the CRTC.  Both Rogers and Cisco now have a legal obligation to the commission and to Canadians to fix this misclassification feature.  At this point and time we strongly believe that any communications with respect to further game testing should be directed towards Rogers, and Cisco.  We also strongly believe that the commission has enough evidence thus far to further pursue remedies under the telecommunications act, and its new policies. Before we start complying with the CRTC’s request and allocating massive resources to this, we would ask that the commission provide the members of Canadian Gamers Organization justification and reasoning for such a request when it’s quite clear  both Rogers and Cisco have that legal responsibility here.  We would also request that CRTC manager Ms. Joanne Baldassi be notified of this response

We do not have a problem with complying with such a request should the commission want us too, but we do find it quite odd that the CRTC is coming to us when testing at this point should be developer and vendor based and has an obligation to act now in accordance with its policies.  We are far past the point here of the new policies the CRTC has set into place on ITMP complaints, and Canadians are waiting for the CRTC to act here.   This is not a new complaint.  Below is our response to Rogers letter to the commission dated September 27th, which clearly indicates policy responsibilities the CRTC has on this file, and the legal responsibility for the CRTC to act now based on the information submitted on this file.  We may request based on the evidence already provided, federal cabinet oversight, and the oversight of the Competition Bureau of Canada, depending on the commissions response to this. A detailed explanation from the commission is also needed at this time as to why the commission is quite clearly ignoring the telecommunications act based on evidence already submitted to this commission on this issue. 

Response to Rogers Letter Dated September 27th, 2011:

Rogers has not provided the commission with a project management report from Cisco that shows a date as to when the misclassification feature will be brought in line with the commissions policy. We request that be ordered by the commission and submitted on the same day we are requested to submit our testing data. 

Please consider this our reply to Rogers letter to the commission dated September 27th, 2011.  We are currently not satisfied with Rogers response.  Specifically we think that the short term resolution to whitelist games on consumer complaints and with the top ten computer games.  We however did not see any commitment to test console games and gaming systems.  Rogers testing procedure here may put some competitors in the gaming industry at a disadvantage in the short term.  We also believe that some consumers who purchase games might also be subjected to undue or unreasonable disadvantage, and that whitelisting is subjected to known game servers.  If a game developer were to move to a different server provider, the onus would be on the consumer to notify Rogers of this, and with Rogers current complaints procedures, it can take months before the new servers are actively whitelisted.  In its September 27th, 2011 letter to the Commission Rogers stated: 

“Unfortunately, customers cannot tell specifically what has caused their problem. It could be, for example, the home pc, the home network, in house wiring, gaming servers, the game itself, Rogers' network and/or external networks.” 

We believe that consumers should not be subjected to hours/weeks/months of troubleshooting to find out that it may be misclassification that’s causing the problems with games, when a more logical solution is having Rogers/Cisco fix this misclassification problem to completely rule out any possibility of misclassification.  Rogers has not provided such a date as to when the commission and consumers can expect this to be fixed. We think that Rogers has not compiled an accurate project management report in which the CRTC requested in its letter dated September 16th.  We believe that the commission should have ordered up a more specific plan requiring dates for completion of milestones to get this problem resolved.  We ask that the commission order a final solution in an expedited process.  We also request that Rogers be put on the Quarterly list of ISPs who are not abiding by ITMP guidelines until such time as a final solution is put in place to fix this problem. 

We believe that such whitelisting based on consumer complaints and selective testing may violate section 27 (2) of the telecommunications act:

Just and reasonable rates 

27. (1) Every rate charged by a Canadian carrier for a telecommunications service shall be just and reasonable.
Unjust discrimination
(2) No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage. 

We believe that in order to be completely in line with the telecommunications act, that a final solution needs to be put into place to ensure there is no possibility of misclassification.  We ask the commission to act to ensure Rogers compliance with both Section 27(2) and Section 36 (as quoted in the commissions letter dated September 16th).

In the September 27th letter to the commission Rogers stated: 

“This is the same technology that is in place in hundreds of other ISPs worldwide, and Rogers does not believe the problems we have experienced are unique to our network”

Due to this statement we request that the commission commence also with a public hearing to fully investigate what has gone wrong with the Cisco’s development process and why it has taken so long to catch, and fix this problem when numerous ISPs use Cisco systems for their ITMP.  We believe that changes to guidelines may need to be implemented and approval of ITMP upgrades by the commission may be needed to ensure we do not have a repeat of misclassification in the future, and to ensure that ISP’s are in compliance with CRTC policy and the telecommunications act.  

Warm Regards,
Jason Koblovsky
(Canadian Gamers Organization)